Woman Gives to the State

Abstract

Barely a year after Teresa Deevy’s Katie Roche was produced, the 1937 Constitution was ratified and represented the culmination of the ‘process of institutionalizing Catholic doctrine. It afforded a special position to the Catholic Church and reflected Catholic teaching in its articles on the family, education and private property.’¹ The chief architect of the Constitution was Taoiseach Eamon de Valera, who held staunchly conservative views on religious, social and sexual matters. Yet, as Jenny Beale suggests, his approach was ‘supported by the Catholic majority, and few were prepared to oppose the main thrust of the Constitution. Women’s organizations campaigned for the deletion of the articles on the family, education and social policy, but failed to get any member of the Republic’s legislature, the Dâil, to champion their cause.’² Beale notes how the ‘terms “woman” and “mother” are used interchangeably’³ in Article 41, and the synonymity with which the terms are used is indeed striking:

41.2.1 In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

41.2.2 The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.⁴